Movie Review by Fr. Tom Condon, O.P.

Fences is the screen adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play about Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington), a trash collector in 1950’s Pittsburgh. The beginning of the movie is weighed down by a lot of dialogue between Troy and his friend Bono, as they finish their shift and make their way home. Like many screen adaptations of plays, I feared that Fences would be stiff and very “talky.” Thankfully Washington, who also directed the movie, brings the characters to the back yard of Troy’s modest house, where we are introduced to his wife Rose (Viola Davis); and then Lyons, his adult son from a previous marriage; Gabe, his mentally handicapped brother; and Cory, Troy and Rose’s teenage son.
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Movie Review by Fr. Tom Condon, O.P.

Hidden Figures tells the true story of African American women who worked in the early years of NASA. They played a significant part in the launching of the first rockets and the orbit of John Glenn in 1962. Yet, until recently, their contributions were largely unacknowledged.
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Movie Review by Fr. Tom Condon, O.P.

Jackie is an intense portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy in the week after the assassination of her husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. Directed by Chilean director Pablo Larraín, it features an excellent performance by Natalie Portman as the grief-stricken First Lady. Larraín uses extreme close-ups of Portman and other actors playing Bobby Kennedy and other members of the Kennedy and Johnson families. It’s an unsettling, yet hypnotic, look at the grief that this very public figure endured.
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